It began, simply enough, at a television studio here, when a 92-year-old man showed up one day to tell Don Shelby, the 42-year-old anchor of WCCO-TV, that Mr. Shelby did not know how to tie his necktie straight.

He had come, the man said, to share an old secret: a formula for tying what he called the perfect tie knot, one that is precisely balanced, absolutely symmetrical and exactly proportional. The rest is, sort of, fashion history.

What the visitor, Jerry Pratt, showed Mr. Shelby that day were the basic steps for tying what a St. Paul clothier now calls the Shelby knot. In a recent mailing to customers in the Midwest, the clothier described it as ”the first new knot for men in over 50 years.”

— nyt talks ties